U.S. President Donald Trump implied on Wednesday that he is willing to talk with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the U.N. General Assembly meeting later this month.
“Whether they want to talk or not, that’s up to them, not up to me,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with the Kuwait Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. “I will always be available. But it doesn’t matter one way or the other. We’ll see what happens.”
Considering his administration has slapped sanctions back on the regime in early August, Trump suggested that his maximum pressure campaign against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism is working.
“Iran is a very much different place from when I first took office,” he said. “Iran is in turmoil right now. They’re in total turmoil. When I took office, it was just a question of how long until they took over the entire Middle East. Now they are just worrying about their own survival as a country.”
Despite Trump’s apparent willingness to meet with Rouhani, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif blasted the Trump administration for its treatment of the Islamic Republic.
“There’s only one UNSC resolution on Iran. @realDonaldTrump is violating it & bullying others to do same,” Zarif posted on Twitter on Wednesday. “Now he plans to abuse presidency of SC to divert a session—item devoted to Palestine for 70 yrs— to blame Iran for horrors US & clients have unleashed across [the Middle East] #chutzpah.”
The resolution Zarif references is one from the U.N. Security Council, No. 2331, which affirmed the Iran nuclear deal back in 2015.
Trump is expected to chair the Sept. 26 Security Council meeting. Iran has yet to announce if it will participate in the session.
